Decolonising sustainability in the business school

Over the past fifteen years, universities have increasingly embedded sustainability into their curricula as a key knowledge area for business students.  In addition to the intrinsic merits of developing graduates who have an awareness of sustainability issues and who are equipped to face complex societal challenges, it is a requirement of business school accrediting bodies such as AACSB, and features in wider university rankings such those of the Financial Times. 

Business schools and SDG engagement

At the business school level, UN Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), which aims to ‘raise the profile of sustainability in business and management education’ has over 850 signatory members (of which over 100 are in the UK and Ireland (UN PRME, n.d.)), However, the inclusion of sustainability matters is often evidenced through the mapping of programme and module content to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or through assessment practices in particular modules which address the SDGs (UN PRME, 2023).  Whilst such mapping is frequently a complex exercise to undertake (Prior et al, 2025), owing to the interconnected nature of the SDGs themselves, such an activity often does not detail in a meaningful way how sustainability is conceptualised and talked about with students (see Weybrecht, 2022). 

The need to decolonise

At the same time, many universities and business schools have given increasing focus to decolonising their curricula (e.g. Śliwa and Decker, 2024), by recognising the historical legacies which continue to shape the knowledge that is created and disseminated within university systems.  However, as Ping Hung Li et al, (2025) point out, there is a significant tension between decolonisation and sustainability discourses, given the that SDG frameworks can be viewed ‘not merely as technical instruments or ethical guidelines, but as hegemonic ideological projects that reproduce global power asymmetries’ (p. 3). As educators, our teaching practice needs to recognise this and make it explicit so that students are equipped with a holistic picture of the complexities and tensions surrounding global sustainability agendas and decolonisation, rather than being presented with a sanitised version of sustainability and development which maps complex social and environmental issues into the seemingly tidy boxes of the SDGs.

An integrated approach to the SDGs and decolonisation

I do not argue that we should not continue to teach the SDGs, or the benefits of such a globally understood framework, which is the only one of its kind.  However, if business schools are serious about their commitment to decolonising the curriculum, this discussion cannot be an uncritical one which privileges the SDGs as the only valid knowledge and route to sustainability whilst ignoring alternative epistemological approaches (see, e.g. Keet and Rafaely, 2025).

Based on my experience teaching the final year undergraduate module ‘International Business and Global Development’ module to International Business students at Manchester Metropolitan University, I propose three points to include in teaching sustainability, which serve to acknowledge the intricacies and ‘messiness’ of understanding the interplay of sustainability and decolonisation in context.

1. Students should be sensitised to the notion that the SDGs are not uncontested, and examine how the despite the bottom-up and collaborative processes of their development, they retain particular ideological underpinnings, especially with regards to the role of businesses as stakeholders in their design.

2. Decolonisation must be explicitly introduced to students, particularly in terms of how management knowledge, including that of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, is not neutral and value-free, but instead has been shaped by dominant Western epistemologies.  As part of this, the universality of Western knowledge must be challenged, and issues such as the exclusion of indigenous knowledges highlighted, particularly with regards to how this relates to sustainability frameworks.

3. Building on these two points, students can be supported to think about how sustainability is a much broader concept than the targets and measures defined in the SDGs.  For example, in the module we introduced the concept of Buen Vivir, based on indigenous Andean traditions of considering humans and non-humans as equal subjects, and which thus emphasises living in harmony with nature (see van Norren and Seehawer, 2025) as an example of a decolonial approach to thinking about sustainability.

Such discussions need to form the basis of an ongoing dialogue which can pluralize sustainability discourses (Ping Hung Li et al, 2025).  Ideally students should be introduced to these ideas in an incremental way, based on principles of continuous improvement and integrated across a programme of study.  This can avoid the perception that such tensions are only considered in a tokenistic way, which can be a significant barrier to authentic decolonisation (Gilani and Aydin, 2026).  Considering alternatives to the status quo in just one module, when the others which form a programme of study take a ‘business as usual approach’, is unlikely to equip graduates with the skills needed to cope with complexities and grand challenges (see, e.g. Šilenskytė et al, 2026).

A call to action

The goal of this piece is not to devalue SDGs or the important contributions that they make, but is intended as a call to action for business schools.  If sustainability education is to be effective and inclusive, it must be positioned in a broader discourse which acknowledges that the SDGs represent situated knowledge which is shaped by historical and colonial legacies.  If business schools are to truly equip students to face societal grand challenges, we must acknowledge these challenges in all their complexity.  This means not only looking for answers through established global frameworks, such as the SDGs, but also asking questions about tensions and paradoxes inherent in supranational sustainability discourses, which are rooted in power structures and often underpinned by capitalist logics which contributed to the existence of such challenges in the first place.

References

Gilani, H. and Aydin, G. (2026).  Beyond the bandwagon: Decolonising the curriculum through student-staff partnerships and the paradox of critical disappointment, International Journal of Management Education, 24(2), 101387.

Keet, A., and Rafaely, D. (2025). ‘Beyond’ critique: universities, human rights, decolonisation and the Sustainable Development Goals, Comparative Education, 61(3), 461-479.

Ping Hung Li, E., Qi, X.-Z., Taji, A., and Man-Lok Lam, M. (2025). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) as ideological apparatuses: Sustainability and the new hegemony in emerging markets, Management Learning, 1-13. DOI: 10.1177/13505076251380390.

Śliwa, M. and Decker, S. (2024). Decolonising the Business School Curriculum: A British Academy of Management Guide, available online at: https://www.bam.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/decolonising-the-business-school-curriculum.html last accessed 27.2.2026.

Prior, D.D., Seshandrinath, S.M., Zhang, M.Y. and McCormack, M. (2025). Measuring sustainable development gaols (SDGs) in higher education through semantic matching, Studies in Higher Education, 50, 1556-1569.

Šilenskytė, A., Cordova, M., Panina, D., Vilasboas Calisto Casnici, C. and Burmester, B. (2026). Defining the scope of Critical Perspectives in International Business Education Research: Frontiers in International Business Education, Critical Perspectives on International Business, 22(1), 1-10.

UN PRME (n.d.). Signatory Members, available online at: https://www.unprme.org/search/ last accessed 27.2.2026.

UN PRME (2023). SDG Integration into Curriculum, Research and Partnerships, available online at: https://www.unprme.org/sdg-integrations/ last accessed 27.2.2026.

Van Norren, D.E. and Seehawer, M. (2025). The Future of Sustainable Development Goals and Culture: Addressing Missing Dimensions from four cosmovisions, African Ubuntu, Latin-American Buen Vivir, Buddhist Happiness and Nordic Sami Arbediehtu, European Journal of Development Research, 37, 861-884.

Weybrecht, G. (2022). Business schools are embracing the SDGs – but is it enough? How business schools are reporting on their engagement in the SDGs, International Journal of Management Education, 20(1), 100589.